I was recently interviewed by Jack Sweeney for his podcast series called CFO Thought Leader. This was the fourth time I was interviewed by Sweeney, and I enjoyed our conversation once again. I believe you will find the conversation interesting and relevant.

Here are some of the questions addressed in this podcast. (You can listen via the Youtube window on this page, you can download the file or find the iTunes link below)

How involved is the Board when hiring a CFO?

How can a CFO hire go wrong?

How can a CFO going through a hiring process work through the CEO/Board dynamics?

What advice do you offer CFO candidates before their first interview?

If a CFO hire is going to happen, what is the time frame to make it happen?

How do you help CFOs with executive coaching?

What advice would you give a CEO trying to evaluate a CFO candidate?

What part do part-time CFOs play in the market today?

When is the right time for a company to hire their first real CFO?

Who engages an executive search firm for a CFO hire?

What advice do you have for senior finance executives that want to build relationships outside their business?

If any of these topics are of interest to you, you will find this podcast to be worth listening to. (29 minutes)

Which comments resonate most with you? Let me know what you think below, or email me.

The following is a summary of our interview with Sajid Malhotra, who was appointed CFO of Limelight Networks in April 2016, as announced in CFO Moves. Prior to being appointed CFO, Sajid was Chief Strategy Officer at Limelight Networks, and worked in strategy roles at Convergys, NCR Corporation and AT&T.

Samuel Dergel: Please tell us about what motivated you to become CFO

Sajid Malhotra: Professionally I recognized the higher responsibility and opportunity to assist in turning around the business. In my previous role as head of strategy, I could influence but this was clearly a lot more. The personal motivation was that I have a desire to assist other company Boards and being at a C-Level position would facilitate that goal.

SD: What challenges did you face becoming CFO when you were not classically trained for the role?

SM: I was at the right place at the right time. There was an abrupt departure of the CFO and I expressed interest to be the next CFO. I knew that the role would be a challenge but I felt, based on the underlying support team, there was low probability of failure and a very high probability of success. I felt I possessed the right skill set to turnaround the business for all stakeholders and wanted to take on the challenge of being a key member to turn a broken business into a successful one. Despite the position being outside of my comfort zone, I recognized, it was an opportunity I should not pass up.

SD: Did you find it challenging to move into the CFO role, acquire a new team and get the results that you need (or able to get them to perform)?

SM: I am a firm believer of not reducing workforces and in giving the incumbents the first chance. I believe keeping and motivating my team is the first order of business. My job is to make the team and the environment I inherit better. Over the course of my 30-year career, I have let the same principle guide me, regardless of the company, the industry or size.

SD: What do you feel are the key qualities for successful leadership?

SM: Leading by example, honesty and transparency, is a requirement. Leading by example and letting my team see how I interact with all around me, my sense of commitment and responsibility helps modify team behavior accordingly. People self-learn and perform.

SD: How important is it to have your people believe in you?

SM: Extremely important. I cannot do this alone. With my team, I can. My resume, experience and capabilities are important elements to getting a job but to be successful, it is all about the team working together towards a common goal and with a clear and unified purpose.

SD: How do you deal with change?

SM: I don’t think people handle change well in general. I have found that when you get the first series of changes and are successful, momentum picks up, employees attitudes change, and the trend becomes your friend.

SD: How are relationships important to you?

SM: Strategy and M&A are transactional roles. The CFO position requires higher engagement and entanglement, not just with the employees, but with vendors, customers, shareholders, community and competitors. I may have underestimated the amount of time investment required to be good at all this. It is a requirement for success.

SD: In your experience, what has been the difference between giving advice vs. taking advice?

SM: I always found it easy to give advice to CEOs, CFOs and boards but taking advice is 180 degrees different. Much, much easier to give and I have higher respect for those who constantly receive.

SD: How important is time management to a CFO?

SM: The CFO position requires a lot of time to do the job well and everyone is asking for your time. It is very easy to get buried in work if one does not manage time well and so, it is crucial to manage it well. We only have 24 hours in a day and time is an equalizer. Do a few things and do them well. Delegate the balance to trusted team members. Opportunities will only return what you invest in them.

SD: What advice do you have for contemporaries considering taking on the CFO role?

SM: Self-awareness as well as conviction are key. The CFO is the gatekeeper to the value vault. Do it well and you create value, do it poorly and you destroy value. Setting expectations and priorities before accepting the role rather than figuring them out after you have accepted the position is important. Ask for help. Take help. Leave personal biases at the door.

SD: Now that you’ve been CFO for over a year, what is your impression about the Office of the CFO?

SM: The CFO is most often the second most important role at any company, and for good reason. I find it an honor to be a CFO. I am temporarily occupying a position and an office. I need to make sure I don’t dilute the role for those who will follow me.

Being a great CFO is about much more than just looking at the numbers.

Accounting may be a technical field, but the modern finance department cannot thrive on technical skills alone. Every client I speak with is adamant about this when looking to make a hire: the best CFOs don’t just “get” the numbers, they are also great leaders and strategic thinkers.

I asked a number of advisors which qualities distinguish the best CFOs when writing my Guide to CFO Success, and they narrowed these down to three.

TABLE 1.1 What Is and What Is Not a CFO?

What a CFO is not

What a CFO is

Accountant

Strategic

Bean counter

Leader

Number cruncher

Advisor

1. The Strategist

The finance department has been playing more of a partnership role in the organization, and CEOs are increasingly looking to their finance leaders to help drive wider business strategies. It is not enough to simply report on performance at regular intervals; CFOs need to make decisions and shape their action plans based on the company’s ambitions.

What’s more, as the keeper of all the company’s data with a view of every department’s objectives and performance, CFOs must also step up and play an active role in refining and aligning business strategies.

2. The Business Leader

As the CFO steps out from the shadow of the finance department and sits at the right hand of the CEO, they are becoming a true business leader in addition to leading their teams. I liken the CFO’s knowledge to Solomon-like wisdom that comes from years of experience, finely-tuned business acumen and a deep understanding of the number behind sound business decisions.

With the finance department as a whole shifting away from traditional accounting, CFOs also need to lead by example while broadening their team’s skillset. Versatility is the hallmark of today’s finance professional and CFOs need to find ways of attracting and hiring people that will help strengthen the finance department’s position in the business.

3. The Resident Advisor

Perhaps the biggest change in terms of the CFO’s role in business today is that their advice is not only valued—it is necessary.

Businesses are currently dealing with a wave of disruptive competitors and fast-changing customer expectations, while also managing a global talent shortage and volatile financial conditions. The wisdom and experience of finance leaders makes them indispensable in the boardroom as companies look to tackle one of the most uncertain economic periods in decades.

As part of this, CFOs also need to be able to sell their ideas. It is one thing to develop a robust and well thought-out plan to help the business tackle its challenges, but unless CFOs can articulate their ideas to non-finance experts these plans may never get off the ground.

A quick word on skills

A strong background in finance principles is essential to any CFO. A seasoned finance professional will have developed a large bag of tricks over the years that make them ideally suited to managing complex numerical issues.

However, many of these skills won’t differentiate CFOs from their colleagues with similar backgrounds. It is business consultancy skills such as strategic thinking, team management, and inter-departmental coordination that will set the best finance leaders apart and help them establish the finance department as the strategic core of the business.

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I was recently interviewed by Jack Sweeney for his podcast series called CFO Thought Leader. This was the fourth time I was interviewed by Sweeney, and I enjoyed our conversation once again. I believe you will find the conversation interesting and relevant.

Here are some of the things that were discussed. (You can listen via the Youtube window on this page, you can download the file or find the iTunes link below)

Are CFOs diligent enough in their due diligence prior to accepting a new CFO role?

The impact of tone from the top on CFOs.

The importance of CEO/CFO chemistry for a CFO job seeker.

How CFOs and CEOs can work together successfully.

What CFOs in the job wish they knew before they accepted the job.

The challenges of building the right Finance team as a new CFO.

If any of these topics are of interest to you, you will find this podcast to be worth listening to. (25 minutes)

Which comments resonate most with you? Let me know what you think below, or email me.

The following is from an interview with Jim Burns. Jim became CFO of Accela in June 2016. Previously, Jim served as CFO of Silver Spring Networks, as announced in CFO Moves. This interview was edited for clarity.

Quick Takes from Jim Burns on…Some key challenges to a rapidly growing software companyReally making sure that you integrate well and deliver on your promise. Progress shifting from more license based models to cloud based and recurring SaaS based models.

Older tech companies having a difficult time growing

There’s been such a shift to cloud, and to analytics, and to SaaS. New companies, those that are starting the kind of legacy free, are the ones where all the growth is coming from.

Advice to future CFOs

Get as broad a level of business and operational experience as you can. You get a totally different perspective looking through the lens of somebody in the business versus somebody in finance. I’m seeing more and more CFOs these days that didn’t come up through the public accounting ranks.

The new CEO/CFO relationship

It seems CEO increasingly wants to be able to spend their time externally making a name for the company with customers and wants a CFO that can make sure that everything, not just the numbers, come together, and that the business is operationally being optimized continuously too.

Building your career

Take chances to do jobs you’ve never done before. Your job isn’t just to run it, but to make it substantially better when you left the role versus when you started it. I shy away from jobs where everything is working perfectly when you go in, because there really is no other way but down.

Samuel: Congratulations on your move to Accela. How do you feel? What are you excited about?

Jim: Well, this is a company that I had to do a fair bit of digging into, to get familiar with it, before joining. And the more I learned about it the more excited I got. They’re really in a great place, and there’s not a lot of competitors. If you think about the enterprise software space, there are so many people trying to get in, and this company has been a market leader and it’s successful. Once you get into state/local governments business, it’s about as sticky as it gets. They just don’t churn very much. It really builds a nice client base, SaaS platform from civic engagement, they’ve been broadening their portfolios through both, organic development and quite a number of acquisitions, and I think it’s just a very exciting space to be. If you look through some of the comparatives they have in the public marketplace, they traded eight nine times sales multiples, because investors just appreciate how strong and sticky this business is. So that’s very attractive. Also the management team is great and the board is great, and everyone is very engaged and focused, and that’s a big deal for me too.

Samuel: At what point in time during the interview process did you decide that this is the place for me, this is where I want to go?

Jim: My initial interview with the CEO was very good and then I got even more excited talking to Mark Jung, who’s the chairman of the company. Mark has been around quite a number of opportunities and he’s been CEO of multiple places and on multiple boards. He really validated everything I hoped the opportunity would be, and then some. So it was fairly early on that I got excited that this might be a great thing.

Samuel: You’re in, and you’re trying to figure your way around this new organization. What do you see are the challenges ahead of you?

Jim: I think the markets are growing great, the company has been through a lot of change recently with quite a number of acquisitions. And that’s heavy lifting and the company is working through it. They made nine acquisitions over just a few years. So really making sure that we integrate that well and deliver on the promise, that we get them making great progress shifting from more license based models to cloud based and recurring SaaS based models. And that’s a wonderful thing to do when you’re private versus public. So just continuing the post that mix shift and in trying to get the EBIT margins where they can be for a company of this size.

Samuel: You’ve come from HP, the technology company that it was and still is a very large and successful business. And you’ve made a transition in both your previous opportunity and this opportunity to a much more entrepreneurial, high growth situation. Tell me about that. How was the experience, what have you learned?

Jim: That is a very interesting question. The HP that I left was very different than the HP that I joined back in the late 80s. Hewlett and Packard had set the company up and the very engineering culture to go after growth opportunities. They then realized that the real brilliant engineers did not want to work amongst thousands of other engineers, so they set the company up as a bunch of small to mid-size businesses that had all the resources they needed to either succeed or fail. Most businesses I worked with were anywhere between four to six hundred people-sized businesses. The HP I left had consolidated so much. The division I was in had a hundred and thirty thousand people. So when I went to Silver Spring it was kind of like going back to my original HP route. It was seven hundred people, 300 million dollars in revenue. And Accela is very much in the same boat. Honestly, I enjoyed the earlier days in HP better than the late days in HP, even though I had a much more senior level of responsibility. It’s the difference between flying, with a dashboard in the cockpit versus being able to see through like a crop duster and see through the windshield and know everything that’s going on. It’s just because of the scale of it. Most of the old tech companies are having a difficult time growing right now because there’s been such a shift to cloud, and to analytics, and to SaaS. And new companies, like Accela, the ones that are starting the kind of legacy free, are the ones where all the growth is coming from. And a being part of that growth story is very exciting.

Samuel:Now that you’re in the growth game, with nimble companies that are very different than the HP that you left. What preconceived notions fell by the wayside once you’ve made it into Silver Spring?

Jim: Honestly, there was a lot that I was able to bring from a process maturity standpoint from HP that Silver Spring needed to grow to. Companies go through different transitions. They go through a starter phase and then they go to a scaling phase and then they go to a more mature optimization phases. And then, unfortunately some of them start to go in decline after that. When I joined Silver Spring, it has just gone IPO six months before, so it kind of had a successful chapter one but it was really struggling with the growing pains of the company. And a lot of the entrepreneurial types that are drawn to startups really shun structure. They don’t want structure. And yet the lack of process and structure was really bootstrapping the company. So I think I came in at a good time when the company needed to put some more process and more discipline and some more rigor in terms of how the portfolio was planned and reviewed. How the businesses were run. Kind of getting the businesses do more of a sinus rhythm so that you could run more collaboratively cross functionally, etc. I consider myself a good chapter 2 guy, and I think Accela is in the same boat now. They’ve made a great name for themselves and now it’s just all about continuing to scale larger and do acquisitions and integrate them effectively and operate in multiple geographies and countries. It’s just a different way of working, but it’s what I like doing, it’s what attracted me to Silver Spring and what attracted me to Accela now.

Samuel: Now that you’re CFO and you’re on your way to another success, what advice do you have for those that are aiming to move into that senior role over the next coming year?

Jim: I think that getting as broad level of business and operational experience as you can. I spent nine years outside the finance function. In HP I was general manager of a couple of businesses. I ran multiple different operational supply chains and services and support and sales operations. You just get a totally different perspective looking through the lens of somebody in the business versus somebody in finance. I’m seeing more and more CFOs these days that didn’t necessarily cut their teeth and come up through the public accounting ranks. They’ve had a broader blend of operations. I think the CEO increasingly wants to be able to spend their time externally making a name for the company with customers and wants a CFO that can really make sure that everything, not just the numbers come together, but that the business is operationally being optimized continuously too.

Samuel: What do you feel has made you successful?

Jim: I think the combination of getting the mentors through my career that not only helped and coached me, but took chances on me to do jobs that I had never done before. Because I had kind of shown a track record before. I always believe your job isn’t just to run it, your job is to make it substantially better when you left the role versus when you started it. I took a lot of jobs where people told me to stay away, people who take those jobs get fired, kind of high complexity jobs, and those ended up being some of my more rewarding roles. Because when you go into something you really can make a name for yourself, it’s demonstratively better when you leave the role versus when you join the role. As long as the right elements are there for the role, there’s any number of roles. I sort of shy away from things where everything is working perfectly when you go into it because there really is no other way but down. This job at Accela has got all the things I want – relative to having a good fast growing market and good leadership position. But also a number of things internally that can use my experience and help to allow them to reach their goals a little quicker.

In my book, Guide to CFO Success, my first chapter discusses what a Chief Financial Officer is. I say that the CFO needs to be a Strategist, Leader and Advisor, and those that act as such are able to become the business leader their company needs.

My perspective is not the only perspective on this topic. Those that follow the continuing discussion in print and online about the Chief Financial Officer see numerous perspectives in blogs, whitepapers and articles about what the CFO really is.

One whitepaper I came across recently was an EXL whitepaper entitled Chief Growth Officer: A new role for today’s CFO. The whitepaper was of interest to me because it discussed how the head of finance, which in many organizations has been very compliance oriented, can (and should) make the transition to a more strategic role. The paper describes the idea of CFO as

Click to download larger graphic

…a “Chief Growth Officer”, a newer, more sharply focused evolution of the notion of the CFO as a “strategic partner” to the business.

The paper also includes an infographic detailing the difference between the “Traditional CFO” and the “Modern CFO”

For those with an interest in the evolution of the Chief Financial Officer, this paper offers some worthy insights on how CFOs can move beyond the traditional and lead growth in their organization.

Vince: Growth is important for the CFO because it’s important to CEOs, boards and investors. CFOs who help drive the strategies that create growth not only increase shareholder value they also differentiate themselves as active partners to the CEO and the business. CFOs’ access to a broad cross section of data and the analytical skills with respect to finding and interpreting that data can make the difference in carving out new or more profitable businesses. Doing this quickly and efficiently requires utilization of new cloud and automation tools.

Samuel: Why do some CFOs miss the opportunity to help grow their business?

Vince: Some CFOs miss the broader opportunity because they are stuck in the older model as the organization’s scorekeeper and, a bit more advanced, as more passive advisor to the business. They may also spend so much time in gathering and validating information that they lose out on the opportunity to truly understand the implications in the patterns in the data – including external macroeconomic and political data.

What are your thoughts about CFOs being organizational leaders for continued growth in their organization?

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If you have been following me for a while, reading my blogs and my book, Guide to CFO Success, you will know that I believe that relationships is the area where CFOs ‘make it or break it’. I continue to speak to CFOs about this because of the direct impact that successful relationships has on the Chief Financial Officer.

When I ask CFOs if relationships are important, all of them agree. Yet when I ask them about to discuss the challenges they have in their corporate relationships, the conversation can go on for quite a while.

Each of the 4 areas of corporate relationships for the CFO (who they report to, work with internally and externally, and who works for them) are important. The CFOs relationship with the CEO is super important. I do not know a CFO who thinks that it is not important to keep their CEO happy.

Yet keeping the CEO happy means that you need to work on your other relationships as well.

A recent Forbes article pointed me to a KPMG report mentioning that “CEOs are relying more and more on the CFO to be their partner”.

Note one of the key findings in this KPMG report:

CEOs put a huge value on people skills, but many see their CFOs as lacking in this area. Almost all (97 percent) of CEOs say that attracting and retaining top-notch finance talent is the most or equally important contributing factor in improving the finance function, yet only 33 percent give their CFOs a passing grade in talent management.

As CFO…

Do you have a passing grade in talent management?

If you do have a passing grade, shouldn’t you be a top performer when it comes to talent management?

Is your Finance team holding you back?

There are resources available on how to improve so that you can score higher on managing your talent (including, but certainly not limited to, my book and blogs). I have found that unless you (the CFO) make talent management a top priority, you will continue to limit your success.

CFOs can only be as successful as their Finance team allows them to be.

I’ve helped others and I can help you. Don’t let your Finance team hold you back.

I speak with many CFOs in my role as executive recruiter, CFO Peer Group facilitator and executive coach. Each CFO, without fail, expresses that they are busy. The scale starts at ‘busy’ and goes all the way to ‘overwhelmed’.

So I was not surprised to see the results of this recent report from EY. I appreciated this infographic, as it helps to explain why the Chief Financial Officer is feeling overwhelmed and under pressure.

These four survey results identify two areas of pressure facing the CFO today.

Weak finance team (Ability to delegate, Concern over finance function)

The day to day gets in the way of the strategic priorities (Tension between old and new, Role stretch)

I showed this graphic to member of my CFO Peer Group, and here is some of the feedback they gave:

Weak finance team

We have under skilled people in place as we cannot “afford” to recruit at the experience level we need

The CFO is being asked to cut staff significantly while taking on additional responsibilities and regulatory burdens. This all needs to be performed while changing and upgrading staff to meet more strategic priorities

The day to day gets in the way

We are so transaction heavy we need more staff to keep up with the day to day

Under increased pressure to meet compliance demands with no legal or other support

The CFO often lacks along with his organization an understanding of the business is one I see quite often from business partners

While there has been an evolution in what else the CFO is responsible for, the CFO is still the defacto compliance officer managing accounting, legal, HR, Facilities, and broad administrative responsibilities.

The CFO is under tremendous pressure today to “do it all”

I also asked my CFOs what can be done to resolve these pressures. Here are some responses.

From a CFO disciplinary viewpoint, you need to define the stands where you say: “this is a MUST to have, and this is a NICE to have”.

Ultimately, the role is CFO is defined by what expectations are.

The CFO often lacks along with his organization an understanding of the business is one I see quite often from business partners. They just don’t visit customers, spend time with sales or other functions.

As CFO, it is your responsibility to deliver what is expected of you. To do so, you need to get the buy in necessary. While platitudes reign, yet not enough CFOs have the ability to change the expectations. Too many times I hear “this is the way it is – I cannot change it”.

As CFO, you have accepted this job in this environment. Either fix it, or find a more reasonable environment. It may not be the environment that’s the problem, but the person in the mirror who accepts the problem environment.

No one wants to just do the best they can (certainly not you). You want to thrive and achieve more, better, further, faster.

You can fix your team – you just need to have a plan and get buy in. As executive coach for CFOs, I have worked with Chief Financial Officers to help them accomplish this. While not an easy task, it will not get better by itself.

You can move from the day to day to the strategic – you just need to make sure you have the people, process and technology that can take care of the day to day to give you time to be involved with the strategic issues.

Here are my recommended steps to break the cycle:

Prepare a vision of how you can focus on the strategic while your team properly covers off the day to day.

Prepare a plan to meet the vision

Sell the plan (classic change management)

Implement it

Deal with exceptions as they happen, yet if exceptions happen regularly, they are no longer exceptions and you need to have the people, process, technology to deal with it.

Sounds simple? It’s not. But unless you are going to tackle this head on, you will be unable to move beyond these challenges and continue to be stuck like most of your peers.

Thack Brown is general manager and global head of Line-of-Business Finance at SAP, and I had the opportunity to speak with him about the report. I have had the opportunity to speak with Thack numerous times over the years, including for my book, and I continue to find his perspectives and insights relevant, useful and enjoyable.

I would like to share 5 points that Thack shared with me that I thought CFOs should hear, listen to, and think about further. (This is an excerpt from my conversation with Thack and has been edited for clarity).

1) This is a platform play at the end of the day.

Companies in the general market are currently revaluating their platforms, their ERP, their financial systems, all of that stack, and saying “it’s all changing”. It’s time for me to place the next bet that will be my platform for the next 10-15 years.

2) Know that the CFO opportunity is a big one.

CFOs need to be ready to make the step out of the finance field, into a more comprehensive involvement understanding of the entire workings of the company. CFOs need to expand their role and take on more responsibilities.

3) You are not alone.

Finance professionals are usually challenged when it comes to networking. We tend to be so overworked and focused on our profession that sometimes we can fall into that trap of believing that our problems are only our problems. Talk to your peers. Network, brainstorm and problem solve. This is a valuable resource and should not be overlooked.

4) The next big thing.

Automation. This has been talked about in the finance world forever. The need to move more effort out of the back office and automate it so you can spend more time in the front office. Move past the shared services environment to full automation. The back office of the future will be a just a few highly skilled experts handling, enabling and ultimately evolving the automation.

5) Advice to midsize companies and their CFOs.

Mid-size companies need to keep an eye on the technology transformations of automation and simplification, because this may be not their opportunity to catch up the big boys, but actually leap-frog them entirely. As an example, they could skip the entire shared services phase.